


this strange elastic world

by attheborder



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Crowley the Relationship Counselor, DTCU (David Tennant Cinematic Universe), F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Timey Wimey, giving undeserved emotional resonance to 'am i ginger' is the name of the game here, ten is Sir Not Appearing In This Fic more or less sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 17:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20213860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: “Peas in a pod,” the Doctor hears Crowley say, almost to himself, as Aziraphale sits back down next to him.“That’swhat there are always two of.”As she rejoins the Doctor, Rose puts her hand in his again. His whole body sings with relief; bless that angel of a man and whatever he said to her, because she seems, for now, to have forgiven him for his cowardice. Her storm-gray eyes are kind, as they always are; he wonders if he deserves that kindness, as he always does.“Come on,” he says, pulling her close with one hand and pointing up at the sky with another. “It’s almost time.”***A story about choosing your face wisely.





	this strange elastic world

_it’s not that the darkness can't touch our lives_  
_ i know it will in time_  
_ but she's no ordinary valentine_  
– the shins, [ september ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRVv9ynlJSI)

**London, 1878**

“Excuse me, young man, we’re _ closed! _” 

The stranger who has just barged into A.Z. Fell & Co., right through the door that Aziraphale is certain he’d locked five minutes ago, seems not to hear. He’s busy crouching against the keyhole, peering through urgently to the street outside.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, out of breath, face pressed up against the doorframe. “Won’t be long. Just dealing with some… some not so good stuff out there— a few moments more, they can’t smell me in here—” 

Aziraphale, on the verge of apoplexy, stands his ground. He’s got a front row ticket to the evening premiere of Gilbert & Sullivan’s new one tonight, and he will _ not _be made late by some floppy-haired miscreant trespasser.

“Sir, I must politely request that you vacate the premises.” 

“I’m not here, I’m not here!” says the man. “Pay me no mind! And _ definitely _don’t open the door,” he adds, “unless you want vicious tripods from Keltrovarith IV slobbering all over your shelves—”

“I’ll pay you as much mind as I please,” says Aziraphale, cutting off the stranger’s nonsense. “As owner of this property, and a taxpaying citizen of London, I reserve the right to eject any and all unwanted intruders. That means _ you. _”

The man finally looks up at Aziraphale, surely preparing some kind of rebuttal. But recognition dawns on his face, and he immediately springs up energetically from the ground. With just a few bowlegged strides across the shop’s floor, he plants himself inches away from the angel.

“I never forget a face,” he says, breaking into a wild, warm grin as he forcefully takes Aziraphale’s hand and shakes it enthusiastically. “Aziraphale, isn’t it? Wonderful to see you, it really is.” 

“I— I beg your pardon?” says Aziraphale. “Young man, have we met?”

“Yes. No. After a fashion. I mean,” the man says, “it’s quite complicated, unfortunately.” 

“Ah,” says Aziraphale, who isn’t a tremendous fan of complicated, so refrains from pursuing that line of inquiry any further.

The man finally lets go of Aziraphale’s hand, and the angel allows himself to give the stranger a once-over. He finds himself admiring his natty attire— a handsome tweed jacket with maroon braces underneath, finely crafted leather boots. And perched atop his collar, a flattering jaunty red bow-tie.

Aziraphale’s hand involuntarily flutters up to his own loose tartan cravat, feeling suddenly stodgy and passé.

“Like the bow-tie?” says the man, not half-proud.

“I— Indeed. It’s quite…” 

“I think the word you’re looking for is _ cool.” _

“Rather,” says Aziraphale, who hasn’t ever looked for that word and won’t actively do so for another century and a half, at the_ very _least, and possibly not even then.

At this point, the man takes it upon himself to make a wide circuit of the bookshop, sweeping his hands approvingly over the shelves. Aziraphale follows behind like a nervous duckling, hands at his back, watching carefully but approvingly as the stranger flips through various volumes from the History section and then, most importantly, puts them back on the shelf. 

Admiring a lovely Emily Barrett Browning second edition, the man asks, “How’s the better half?” 

“I’m sorry?” says Aziraphale, feeling a bit thrown off.

The man looks up from the book and squints at Aziraphale. “You know. Red hair. Sour face. Rather fond of you. Crowley, wasn’t it?” 

Aziraphale’s brain short circuits completely. 

“We— ah. Hm. I. Well— We’re not exactly. Er. On speaking terms, at the moment.” 

The man’s elastic face falls. He looks as if he’s about to offer some form of condolences, which Aziraphale doesn’t really know if he can handle, so luckily he’s saved by a terrible commotion coming from right outside the shop.

Through the windows Aziraphale can suddenly see pedestrians fleeing down the street, running for their lives. A horse whinnies, somewhere up the road.

“Ah. That’d be the Keltrovox,” says the man knowledgeably. “They’re after the Crown Jewels. Well, the Crown Jewel I’ve got in my pocket, to be specific. Bit of a mess. Did you know, the crystalline matrix of the Black Prince’s Ruby is a perfect breeding environment for their tadpoles?” 

“I didn’t,” says Aziraphale truthfully. 

The man makes a mad dash for the door, swinging it wide open, which increases the volume of the screams outside by several orders of magnitude.

“Listen,” the man says, turning back to Aziraphale on the doorstep, “lovely shop you’ve got, wish I could stick around. You don’t mind me leaving without buying anything, do you?” 

“I really don’t,” Aziraphale assures him. Then, with a parting wink that he somehow manages to turn into a full-body movement, the man is gone, and the door swings shut behind him. 

Aziraphale leans against a table, mind working overtime to process the impossibly bizarre encounter.

Who _ was _ that strange young fellow? Perhaps a friend of Crowley’s? One of the mysterious fraternization alternatives he’d alluded to, the last time they’d spoken? Aziraphale can’t really imagine Crowley tolerating the presence of someone so… _ springy, _but he supposes there are lots of things about Crowley he can’t picture but are true all the same.

In any case, by the time Crowley’s awake to ask, thirty years later, Aziraphale has entirely forgotten about the whole affair.

**Bristol, 1972**

“Bloody surveyors,” Crowley hisses. “No sense of organization at _ all. _”

He’s pawing through sedimentary layers of moldering city planning files from across Britain, in the basement archives of St. Luke’s University’s prestigious geography department. It’s this damned M25 plan of his— well,_ not _ damned, not _ yet _ at least, that’s the _ point. _

This wasn’t the sort of stuff he’d signed up for, when he became a demon. No, he thought it’d all be whispering in ears and encouraging free will and being a sexy nuisance. None of this lurking in the mildew-ridden bowels of academia, hunting down one stupid precious piece of paper. 

He _ knew _ he shouldn’t have mentioned any of the motorway stuff to Aziraphale. But he’d been utterly sloshed, and the angel had been utterly sloshed, and so naturally had been going on about some lovely school he’d recently saved from bankruptcy with a miraculous inheritance for its pure-hearted, empty-pocketed director. Crowley hated being one-upped and Aziraphale _ knew _ that, so of _ course _ he was going to drunkenly interject with the latest update on the Dread Sigil Odegra.

For his trouble, he’d gotten fully thwarted out of London, at least on all motorway-related accounts. It was no problem entering the London Transport building in Westminster if all he wanted to do was swap around the signs on the loos. But finding the specific maps and documents he needed had proven utterly impossible. Miraculously so, in fact. Doors locking themselves in his face, papers wiping themselves blank underneath his fingers. 

_ “I do apologize, dear boy, but I simply cannot let this scheme proceed within my purview,” _ Crowley mimics out loud in the dim, moldering silence of the basement. “Course. But making me go all the way to the ends of the blessed Earth to get it done anyway, though, that’s _ fine. _Proper and sensical thwarting, that is.”

The angel has really been overcompensating on the righteousness of late. Of course, Crowley knows why, or at least he thinks he does. The whole giving-holy-water-to-a-demon thing surely left a dent in his ethereal ego, and he’s just trying to build it back up again. Probably.

As Crowley reaches the bottom of the drawer, his hands coated in the kind of fetid academic grime that tends to be horrendously resistant to demonic power, the light in the storage room flicks on, interrupting his dark mutter of _ “ _ Who says _ purview _ , anyways? Thinks he’s still in the Regency, the bastard— _ ” _

“Looking for this?”

Crowley whirls around. There’s a man standing in the doorway of the room. In one hand, he’s holding a large rolled-up map that Crowley immediately identifies as the 1969 topographical survey of the greater London area that he’s been chasing down for the past month.

The stranger has silver hair, and wears a white shirt underneath a well-tailored black blazer; his gaze is piercing and clear below a heavy brow, the kind of look that says “no funny business” very loudly and adds “I will fuck you up” in a low whisper.

Crowley rolls his eyes behind his shades and snaps his fingers, not much in the mood for banter with a grouchy, territorial geography professor. He wants to get that damned map and get the hell out of Bristol, the sooner the better. 

But to his shock, the mind of the intruder utterly fails to bend beneath his occult touch. Imagine Crowley’s usual procedure akin to paper beating rock in a game of rochambeaux: this is more like his open palm being met instead with a powerful high five. 

“Very clever,” drawls the man. “Use that one at parties, do you?” 

The harsh fluorescent lighting of the storage room makes the stranger’s face look cruel and trickster-like. The shine on the man’s well-kept black work boots, though, to Crowley’s dismay, induces a mild twinge of admiration. 

“Give me the map,” Crowley says, in his most demonically commanding voice. It’s one thing for a human to resist simple psychic bullying, yet another to back down from a straightforward command given in a deep and intimidating tone.

“Why?” says the man, in a way that implies he knows _ exactly _why Crowley wants it, but is interested to see if he can get him to say it out loud.

“Because,” growled Crowley, stalking forward, “I said so.” He’s all up in the stranger’s face now, his teeth bared.

“Oh, don’t you _ growl _ at _ me! _ ” the man says, and then, unbelievably, _ raps Crowley on the head _ with the rolled-up blueprint. “Next thing you know, you’re onto _ hissing, _ and then _ barking— _we’re all civilized immortals here, let’s keep our fangs in our mouths.”

Crowley is altogether too stunned at being whacked like a misbehaving hellhound to even _ begin _ to countenance what the man could _ possibly _ mean by that last bit.

The stranger twirls the survey like a baton. He is having way too much fun with this, whatever _this _is.

“Just hand it over, will you?” Crowley says, deeply ashamed of how close to saying _ please _ he’s coming.

“Fine! Fine,” says the man. He proceeds to unceremoniously drop the map into Crowley’s grasp. “But only because I sort of owe you one. I mean, you're practically family.” 

Crowley accepts this as a matter of course; people owe him things all the time. It’s part of his whole deal. He inspects the map quickly, finds it in good condition. Then he gives the stranger a perfunctory grimace, and pushes past him out the door into the basement corridor beyond. 

“Say hi to Aziraphale for me,” calls the man after him.

Crowley immediately stops, and spins around on his fashionably stacked boot-heel, his whole body tensing up. It’s one thing to be taunting Crowley, he can take it, but if this man knows about Aziraphale then he could be a _ threat _, a real threat to the angel’s safety— aaaand, he’s gone. 

Catching a glimpse of a dark shape disappearing around the far corner of the corridor, Crowley strongly considers running after him, with an eye towards shaking him down for answers. Then he looks down at the hard-won prize in his hand, and remembers the sheer amount of _ work _he’s got to do in order to get things ready for his presentation Downstairs next week. 

Also, he _ hates _running. 

So he throws up his hands in defeat, and storms off in the opposite direction.

And by the time he’s up in front of his coworkers, asking for his wahoo, the mystery of the rude professor has been almost entirely forgotten.

**South Downs, 2054**

The hilltop fills up, as the sun sets over the sea. People have come from miles around, setting up hours early, buzzing to catch the first glimpse of the evening’s once-in-a-lifetime celestial entertainment.

The Doctor and Rose struggle over the rise, carrying a scratchy flannel blanket and a picnic basket, retrieved from one of the TARDIS’s infinite closets. 

They scan for an empty space on the grass, and finally find one next to a couple sprawled out on a tartan quilt. It’s quite crowded by now, so they end up necessarily close to the two men, who are passing a bottle of wine back and forth over an elaborate picnic spread of their own. 

“Dammit,” Rose says, crestfallen, digging through the basket as they set up. “I forgot the forks for the pasta!” 

“Remind me to never take you to Jundallion Station in the 80th century,” says the Doctor. “Home of the Cutlery Cult. They’d have you drawn and quartered, for an offense like that.”

“I’ll go back and get some,” Rose sighs, but before she can rise from the blanket a voice comes from beside them. 

“You’ll do no such thing!” 

It’s one of their neighbors: the man in the cream-colored jacket, with the hair like a puff of dandelion. Leaning over across the scant inches of grass that separate him from Rose, he hands over two antique-looking silver forks.

“Oh, thank you!” says Rose, brightening.

“No problem at all,” says the man cheerily. “Just our luck we had some extras.” 

“A miracle,” says the Doctor, and the man’s partner, the redhead in the dark glasses, lets out a curious bark of a laugh. 

The first man introduces himself as Aziraphale and his husband as Crowley. With the eager sociableness common to at least one half of all middle-aged couples, he tells the Doctor and Rose about how the phenomena they’ve all gathered for has a certain special significance for the two of them.

“It was in the sky the night we first met,” Aziraphale says, looking over at Crowley with an expression so enamored that even the Doctor’s unsentimental insides experience a glow of secondhand fondness. “It had been raining, but once the clouds cleared… there it was.”

“Aww,” coos Rose. “That’s just lovely. Congratulations, you two.” 

The September evening breeze is chilly over the Downs. The Doctor shrugs his leather jacket off and lays it gently over Rose’s shoulders. She thanks him, he nods with a smile; they lay down on their backs and look up at the darkening sky. 

The conversation of their neighbors is quiet, too quiet for Rose to hear, but the Doctor’s obtrusive ears have their uses and so he listens: 

“Right there, angel. That one’s Delta Cygni. Binary star system, just like Alpha Centauri. Weather’s not as good, but the food’s a bit better.” 

Aziraphale asks, quietly and happily, as if he already knows the answer, “Would you take me there, my dear?”

“Anytime, angel. Anywhere you want to go.” 

Rose’s hand is warm in the Doctor’s. It’s odd. He feels as if he misses her, even though she’s right there with him. It’s awful, all of this holding back. He wishes he knew how to let himself go.

She turns her face to him, smile like a thousand suns, brilliant and blinding. He holds her gaze. 

And then it happens so quickly— she leans in, and kisses him. He’s frozen, his face not moving— except then it does move, but only to pull away.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry,” she says, abashed, “dunno what came over me— I just—“ 

“S’alright,” says the Doctor, but there is something hot and molten rising inside of him, a fury at his own walls, at his own weakness and incapacity, and what is meant as a reassurance comes out sounding more like an admonishment.

She sits up, frowning, looking away from him. “I’m going to— I’m just gonna,” and then she’s getting up off the blanket, dusting herself off. “Gonna go for a walk,” she says, and heads off quickly down the crowded hill. 

As she rises, the Doctor sees Crowley look at Aziraphale, something wordless passing between the two of them. 

Aziraphale nods almost imperceptibly, and then says, “Won’t be a moment.” He gets to his feet and hurries after Rose down the hill, leaving the Doctor and Crowley alone.

Crowley moves so he’s closer to the Doctor, and then reaches out and offers over their bottle of wine.

“Known her long?” Crowley asks as the Doctor takes a long drink. Obviously, the man isn’t one for conversational subtlety. The Doctor can appreciate that.

He smiles ruefully, passing the bottle back. “We’ve only just met, really.”

“Wouldn’t know it,” Crowley says. “Swear. You’re like two, er. Whatever there are always two of.” 

The Doctor scowls, sighs. “I’ve already fucked it up, though,” he says. “I’m trying. I’m doing my best but I’m just— I’m not _ built _ for it, whatever she _ wants, _ I can’t give it to her. I can give her everything else, _ anything, _but— you know.”

“Mm. You want to, though?”

“More than anything.” 

“So what is it, then?” 

“Sorry, what do you mean?”

“Whatever you did.” Crowley says. “Whatever makes you think you don’t deserve to try.” 

The Doctor thinks of the War. He thinks of planets melting to ash, of his homeworld falling away into the endless night; the screams of his own people as they burned down to nothingness. The endless temporal battlefield, the scars he was forced to bear.

“I’m not….” He sighs. How can he put it. “Some things are unforgivable.”

“Maybe so,” says Crowley slowly. “But. Some things are better than being forgiven. Being loved, for one. And loving in return.” 

At this, the Doctor wants to spit out something sarcastic, scoffing at this man, because what would _ he _ know about choices you can’t take back, choices that leave you burned and broken and undeserving? What would _ he _know about the kind of selfishness it must take to invite someone into your life despite all that, someone pure and kind and beautiful, exposing them to everything you carry, everything that follows you? 

But he doesn’t snap back. Something stills his tongue. Something about this man, his posture or his tone or even just the way he’s dressed, is resonating deep within the Doctor, and he feels, just for a moment, like he’s left his body, and is looking at some future version of himself, one that has figured out that final secret. 

“You two have a nice thing going on,” he says instead. “Really. I’m happy for you. But it’s just not my style.” 

“If I can do it,” Crowley says, very seriously, “anyone can. _ Especially _you. No matter what you’ve done. Just… trust me on this one. And, look. It doesn’t have to be as hard as you think it is.” 

At this, the Doctor just nods, takes a final sip from the bottle of wine, and hands it over. Silently, he thinks, _ Wouldn’t it be nice. _

They sit in silence for a few more moments, and then Crowley waves a hand, and the Doctor turns to see Aziraphale and Rose walking back up over the rise. They’re winding their way through picnic blankets, laughing together like old friends; Aziraphale has a paternal hand on her shoulder.

“Peas in a pod,” the Doctor hears Crowley say, almost to himself, as Aziraphale sits back down next to him. “_ That’s _what there are always two of.” 

As she rejoins the Doctor, Rose puts her hand in his again. His whole body sings with relief; bless that angel of a man and whatever he said to her, because she seems, for now, to have forgiven him for his cowardice. Her storm-gray eyes are kind, as they always are; he wonders if he deserves that kindness, as he always does. 

“Come on,” he says, pulling her close with one hand and pointing up at the sky with another. “It’s almost time.” 

A minute later, a collective gasp erupts from the crowd.

Right on the horizon, a brilliant flare slowly unrolls across the sky. Massive and majestic, like a deity’s brush is painting a glowing streak of white amidst the stars. Its surreal, impossible beauty falls across the gathered audience; they turn to their loved ones, awed, suddenly newly aware of their place in the universe, the fragility and the diamond-strong truth of it. The unfurling brightness is reflected in dozens of shining eyes the hilltop over. 

“The long-period comet P/1993 Manning-Sturmer,” the Doctor tells Rose, his finger tracing the arc of the comet in the sky. “Reaches perihelion every 6,057 years and eleven months.”

“What’s a perihelion?” 

“The moment it’s closest to the Sun.” 

“So, last time you could see it up there, like that, was six thousand years ago?” 

“Yup.”

“Then, hold on,” says Rose, and she throws a glance over to their neighbors. Crowley is leaning back against Aziraphale on the quilt, his head against his husband’s chest, their hands interlaced over his heart. 

Realization dawns on her face. “They said… but that means they…”

He raises an eyebrow. “Use your words.”

“They’re aliens, then? Six thousand year old aliens? _ Gay aliens? _”

He grins at her. “Might be.” 

She giggles incredulously, and then covers her mouth, remembering that the couple in question is barely a foot away.

Over her shoulder, the Doctor looks at his new friend, admiring the practiced ease with which he brings himself close to the one he loves. 

Rose is looking back up at the comet now. “Six thousand years is a long time,” she says. “Dunno if I could stand you for that long. Or anyone, really.”

“Too bad you’re stuck with me,” says the Doctor. “Like a bad smell in the carpet. No getting me out now.”

“You smell _ fine,”_ laughs Rose, and the comet brightens above them. 

**Later**

“You were absolutely fantastic,” he’s saying, “and you know what? So was I.” 

Regeneration is a lottery nowadays, the science of choice destroyed in the War; all those secrets taken to the graveyards of Karn. 

So as he looks at Rose, so scared and so brave and so very beautiful, there is nothing he can do but hope. 

_ Make me for love, _ is his last, desperate thought, as he lets it overtake him. _ Make me into someone that can love her. _

In the instantaneous, liminal state he enters now, he is not aware of the holy and obscure mechanisms at work deep within his cells. In response to his final plea, they are drawing forth a memory:

A hill by the sea. Rose’s hair, blowing in the wind. Her hand in his. Her smile. Her laugh.

And there was a man there, and he was in love, and he told the Doctor, it’s easy. It can be so easy. If I can do it, you can. 

And he meant: You don’t have to be what you were. You don’t have to belong forever to the fire, to the horrors of the past. Just let her in. Let her change you. Let her make you better. 

The memory flares, glows, like the comet in the sky, thousands of years of devotion taking the form of a flame in the night, a stranger in the starlit dark. Coalescing into—

The new man. He’s here.

Dressed in black like that— it’s uncanny. 

(The hair, though. Not quite right. He’ll have a chance to be disappointed about that later.)

Right now, even through the fevered haze of the change, he can feel it inside.

He looks at Rose, and he wants to take her anywhere she wants to go. Off into the stars. _(Barcelona?) _

He looks at her, with new eyes, and he doesn’t need to be forgiven anymore. Not like this. All those barriers, gone now. He only needs to love. 

And he can, and he will. 

***

**Author's Note:**

> me letting the youtube algorithm spoon feed me doctor who clips at 2 AM and ending up on [this scene:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7qx-0lvC18) hey guys.............. Guys????????????
> 
> i'm on tumblr! [@areyougonnabe](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com)


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